February 24, 2011

In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker's plan to take away the collective bargaining power of the teacher's union follows years of attacks by white liberals on teachers and teachers unions for failing to Close the Gap.

Consider the beginning of the media-celebrated documentary, "Waiting for 'Superman.'" Davis Guggenheim, white liberal dad, winner of an Oscar for the Al Gore documentary, drives past three public schools in Venice every morning to get to a private school in Santa Monica. He muses on the narration that he felt he was “betraying the ideals I thought I lived by.”

Why, then, doesn't he send them to public school? Well, the obvious reason is because public schools in Venice are full of Hispanics and blacks (one of them is 95 percent Non-Asian Minority), and, privately, Guggenheim doesn't think his kids will get as good an education in a classroom that has to cater to NAM needs. But, no way no how is he ever going to say that in public. He'd never get another Oscar.

So, Guggenheim makes a well-publicized documentary to blame his private decision on what's best for his kids on the horrible, evil teachers unions who prevent America from Closing the Gap. See, if only the teachers unions weren't screwing up black and Hispanic students so bad, Davis Guggenheim and his wife, movie star Elizabeth Shue, would be happy to put their kids in a 95 percent NAM school! But until America decides to Fix the Schools and Close the Gap by firing bad teachers, they'll just have to continue to drive past all those public schools to their private school.

Can you blame Republican politicians for taking advantage of liberal logic?

102 comments:

Not a sure thing because. If he knew the truth that good students do well in these schools which are not really bad they just have bad students and if government schools supervised the children better keeping the violence down he might in fact send his children to those schools.

What you seem to miss is that teachers ARE bad and the unions ARE a racket. It's not a binary proposition - group differences in IQ play a part (probably the larger part, given the 1stdv difference between blacks and whites), but the education and hiring of teachers in this country is also a joke. We won't be able to eliminate the gap, but, hey, how about hiring teachers who know what they're doing?

Republicans have been bashing (with good cause!) the teachers' unions for decades, and it was always justified. That liberals are now coming around to this cause (in order to avoid thinking prohibited thoughts about race) is a great chance to finally do something about these clowns.

He should be careful; it's only a matter of time before the target of the blame shifts (back?) to elitist parents like Davis Guggenheim himself. I certinly blame him for the gap far more than 'bad teachers' or 'bad schools' or even a 'bad system'.

My opinion is that a little behaviorism never hurt anyone (though too much certainly did).

The gap exists as an observable phenomenon. Period. In practical terms it doesn't matter why. A number of peripheral adjustments have been made with no real effect. It's up to black learners to close it themselves. Even if they fail to do so, a lot of outcmes would be a lot better if they seriously tried. Looking for some magic speed up pill certainly hasn't worked so far and there's no reason to assume it will.

It also ties in with issues like immigration. Those who are most into looking for magic pills are also very much into the idea that their own suffering countrymen should mean no more (or less!) to them than random peasants in some foreign country.

Today on the Rush radio show a teacher called in to complain that Rush was blaming teachers for the failure of kids to be literate. The teacher explained that he and his wife, also a teacher, were Rush fans, but took offense to Rush's blaming of teachers for poor public school results.

The thing about the call that stood out to me was listening to the teacher explain how things have changed in the last 20 years and the types of people they were trying to educate were "different". I immediately thought about isteve and other blogs that have been trying to raise this issue. That poor teacher could not come out and say it. All he could do was say that the kids were "different". Maybe reality is starting to get through to some people.

He's betraying the ideals he "thought" he lived by? Well, now he can get honest and admit he never had any, apart from status seeking, accumulating money, hobnobbing with the better folks, etc. I really gag when well off types present themselves as being agonized by moral dilemmas such as this. They're suffering, and with heavy hearts they decide to send their kids to private schools. A moment of silence, please, for the suffering rich.

Shoot - teachers have known that some populations are "different" for a long time. But they're not allowed to say that if they want to keep their jobs or ever get another one.

That's why No Child Left Behind was such great fun - maybe the best thing GW did in office. It forced public schools to meet minimum standards on penalty of losing funding. Things like that tend to focus the mind. Unfortunately they soon figured out how to water down the tests, but in the meantime had a teachable moment as they say.

The economy is far more to credit/blame for the recent demonization of public unions. If there were decent tariffs and low immigration and balanced trade then the majority wouldn't under attack from all sides and wouldn't be demanding that public union members be taken down to the lowest common denominator. Just proves that in the end we're all in this together - you can't throw all the machinists out of work and make all the drywall guys compete against $8/hr illegals and then think that an average public school teacher is going to keep getting $80K/yr with a fat pension.

"Those of us toiling in education are your biggest supporters, Steve."

Half Sigma has talked about this and I agree with him. Middle-aged urban public school teachers are the most race-realist group of middle class whites I know of.

I don't think that the Peace Corps, Doctors without Borders or similar organizations have that sort of power to open middle class people's eyes to reality. Perhaps the language barrier is to blame there.

Education majors were the dumbest majors in college. Teachers aren't very smart. It's a cushy job where the only "grad school" you have to do is a fake M.Ed. that any two-bit college has a program for.

Anonymous said... Today on the Rush radio show a teacher called in to complain that Rush was blaming teachers for the failure of kids to be literate.

Rush knows what's up, he's just canny enough to know not to talk about the actual problem. I listened to him when he first got to WABC in NY in the mid 1980s, and he would occasionally come out with blunt truths. At the time, Rush was less of a star on WABC than Bob Grant, whose outspokenness on race eventually cost him his career. Rush watched and learned.

I enjoy your posts Sir, but may I explain something to you about teacher union power, at least in California? I used to be a trial lawyer in CTA's group legal services program. This is the central feature of union membership. When I was participating, any certificated educator was entitled, without cost, to the services of a first-rate, really crack attorney in challenging any termination or other significant discipline So, if some administrator, doubtless prompted by the complaint of a parent or "community" group, were to make a politically incorrect observation, such as the ineducability of many of the students, that administrator and her district would have one hell of a tough and expensive legal fight on their hands. The first thing that these very talented (often Jewish) lawyers would do is assert the First Amendment. An administrative law judge (the first step in the process) would likely be very responsive to such a claim, and would invalidate the termination. The district would then have the burden of overturning that decision in the courts under an "arbitrary and capricious" standard, which is very tough to scale. In short, what you describe has virtually no chance of occurring in a state with a seasoned teachers' union.

But where Lehigh reported a 10-point gap in graduation rates between whites and their black and Hispanic peers in 2008, Notre Dame's black and Hispanic undergraduates completed their degrees at a rate only 1.1 percentage points lower than the overall rate of 95.8 percent, according to the Education Trust.

Hmmm, a couple of questions:

1. How many years, on average, do each racial group take to graduate?

2. How much has Notre Dame dumbed down its courses?

3. What type of classes do NAMs take compared to the others? Lots of Victimhood Studies and other soft degrees, I imagine.

Quoting Chief Seattle: "The economy is far more to credit/blame for the recent demonization of public unions. If there were decent tariffs and low immigration and balanced trade then the majority wouldn't under attack from all sides and wouldn't be demanding that public union members be taken down to the lowest common denominator. Just proves that in the end we're all in this together - you can't throw all the machinists out of work and make all the drywall guys compete against $8/hr illegals and then think that an average public school teacher is going to keep getting $80K/yr with a fat pension."

Currently, Unions are Diversity's paymasters. Union workers, particularly government unions take dues (from mostly White workers) and use it to elect diversity politicians. Unions spent $400 million on Obama in 2008. This increases government costs while decreasing taxes.

A diverse workforce gets basically the amount of government Mexico can afford. That's it.

"Why, then, doesn't he send them to public school? Well, the obvious reason is because public schools in Venice are full of Hispanics and blacks (one of them is 95 percent Non-Asian Minority), and, privately, Guggenheim doesn't think his kids will get as good an education in a classroom that has to cater to NAM needs."

The primary reason white parents avoid NAM schools is to avoid having their kids assaulted, like that poor girl in Richmond High who got gang raped by "sensitive" young Hispanic males (and an opportunistic 40 year old black man who happened to see a bloodied, naked white girl lying on the ground). Or that 12 year old girl in Manchester NH who got her front teeth knocked out by a 14 year old Kenyan immigrant when she refused to grant him sexual favors. Who cares if the test scores are low? All the instruction that happens in a public school your child can get by sitting in a public library (or at home) reading a book for a couple hours a day -- MAX! Also, white parents don't want their sons picking up hoodie culture, which is almost unavoidable anyway if they belong to a sports team.

The Waiting for Superman movement has been a gift for corporatist Republicans looking to bust unions. The way to tell the naive true believers (Duncan, Guggenheim) from the opportunists (Chris Christie) is whether they relish taking a budget axe to the schools even after saying that education should be the priority of all priorities.

Everyone deserves some of the blame, but I always got angry at my unions (local, state, and fed) for never shouting out the truth two decades ago about two things:

1.) In CA, judicial decisions destroyed the schools, making it virtually impossible to remove the troublemakers quickly. Of course, as the number of troublemakers grew, the deleterious effects of those judicial decisions grew.

2.) Teachers and their reps needed to tell the hard truth--you can only produce a half-way decent product if you get half-way decent raw material, and at least in CA, the raw material has been very, very bad....lots of low average to low IQ kids, troubled kids with decent IQs who come from utterly dysfunctional homes, a bloated self-serving educational bureaucracy, some rank and file idiots who are so young /or so stupid they fell for the crap their liberal colleges told them about every child's potential.

I am not about to take offense since I do realize that the young crop of teachers with whom I taught the last years of my service is comprised of some very dull people, but let me point out that just about all non-hard science college grads, even from places like UC Berkeley, come across as poorly educated to me. If they graduated in the mid-70s or later, watch out.

I am 62. A lot of bright women my age went into teaching because other fields were still not very welcoming. Things have changed.

For what it's worth, Geoffrey Canada's program has actually made some progress toward closing the test score gap. It will be interesting to see what effects, if any, his "baby college" will have on the participants' test scores in the future.

Anywhooz, tell me HBDers, what is a viable solution; one that's in line with your high iq and scientifically sound ideas?

As others have already pointed out, there are really two separate issues here: 1) the increasing NAMization of our population resulting in fewer educable students, and 2) our corrupt (and expensive) public school teachers' unions that are more interested in political indoctrination than in academic instruction.

I predict that in a few more decades most middle-class white and Asian kids will be educated in homeschool co-ops or charter schools, while public schools will become little more than daycare/detention centers for NAM kids, with no pretense at educating them beyond very basic literacy.

"The primary reason white parents avoid NAM schools is to avoid having their kids assaulted"

For a blog all about race realism there isn't complete honesty on this subject. Sure black male students are prone to indecent behavior but the scariest and most repulsive scenario for white parents, particularly white fathers here, is the pretty white blond hooking up with the cool black guy.

Is this a joke? Are you trying to prove his point about education majors being dumb? Watch for homonyms, and make sure that you don't imply that all teachers share one ass.

Having said that, OneSTDV wrote an interesting post defending teachers' unions. The point is that if we want to have good teachers in the classroom, we'll have to compensate them well. (The trouble of course is that unions are usually far more concerned with protecting mediocrity than rewarding excellence.)

The central focus of Progressive’s rhetorical assaults is aimed overwhelmingly at the rich. In part because they have money but also because they are a less sympathetic target than working class conservative stiffs who they like to portray as misguided. We have all heard the story, “What is wrong with Kansas”, blah, blah, blah. The problem the left is now having with the brouhaha in Wisconsin and the rest of the country over public employees is that it pits progressives against the same working stiffs that they claim to advocate for. No matter what happens, public employees will take a public relations hit that they will never fully recover from. It is clear that the future of the Democratic party will be government employees and ethno-Americans just like the labor parties in Europe.

You're right Steve, but you're missing the giant elephant. Working class white Republicans have been ramming their own petards for years. Unlike teachers many already have no union, pension, or job security, and yet they mobilize behind politicians who will do everything in their power to keep it this way. For 30 years the GOP has fought to redistribute income upwards so that all gains from productivity growth are diverted to a narrow set of plutocrats and executives. Getting mad at teachers instead of Citibank is like being robbed and then helping the robber get your neighbor.

Scott Walker's plan to take away the collective bargaining power of the teacher's union

It is not about "teachers' union". It is about all and any public sector WI unions. It is a political move to castrate public unions and it has nothing to do with The Gap, closed or not. There are over 420,000 WI government employees - clearly teachers can't be majority of them in a state with population less than 6,000,000. For comparison, total private employment in WI is around 2,300,000. So State employs about one in every six workers. Sounds kinda high.

I prefer the abbreviation NNAM (non-North Asian Minority). Anyone who has lived around South Asians, especially Indians, realizes that they are pretty close to blacks in their behavior and intelligence. The average IQ of India is only 81. And despite the fact that some of the best and brightest Indians have immigrated to the US, it still does not change the fact that most Indians are straight out of Camp of the Saints. I hear that there are Indian ghettos now in New Jersey where Indians blast "desi rap" and sell heroin all hours of the night. Enter, chain migration.

If you come from a state like Mass. and have half a brain you understand the corrosive effect of massive dependence upon government jobs (The pensions especially). There are some naive bastards on this board if they think the long term health of the middle class is jeopardized by the purge of the public sector unions.

The middle class will only gain power if the majority of it's workers are actually engaged in productive pursuits. Frankly it's not now the case.

Also there are too many women in these non-jobs as well. They should be raising children.

Today on the Rush radio show a teacher called in to complain that Rush was blaming teachers for the failure of kids to be literate. The teacher explained that he and his wife, also a teacher, were Rush fans, but took offense to Rush's blaming of teachers for poor public school results.

Not a very bright teacher - Rush blamed the teachers unions for poor public school results.

If there were decent tariffs and low immigration and balanced trade then the majority wouldn't under attack from all sides and wouldn't be demanding that public union members be taken down to the lowest common denominator.

I don't know about "lowest common denominator". I'm just tired of government workers being an exalted class with perks and bennies unavailable to the typical American worker.

We can't all bribe politicians to give us better-than-average jobs and retirement benefits, and therefore none of us should be able to do it.

Before the 1960's no government workers were unionized. Unions were not introduced because government workers were working 100 hour weeks - Democrat politicians unionized government workers in order to funnel money into their own campaign coffers.

In this way, the public-sector employees who have taken to the streets over the past 10 days have quite a bit in common with the Tea Party, despite the two being cast as sworn enemies by the media—the lazy free loaders vs. the Astroturf of corporate capitalism.

The people in the Tea Party (aka taxpayers) pay the salaries of the people in the government unions.

The fact that the teachers protesting in WI are white should not blind you to the fact that their union dues go to suport the entire Democratic party anti-white machine.

First, a teacher needs to be reasonably intelligent, but doesn't have to be a genius to motivate kids. In California teachers with a degree and a decent Cbest score are smart enough for most assignments, and they don't generally go into high school science and math unless they have an aptitude. Second, in California, at least, teachers major in a regular academic subject, and are not exposed to the ED school BS until post-graduate credentialing.

"Not a very bright teacher - Rush blamed the teachers unions for poor public school results."

Even teachers unions aren't responsible for the supposedly poor performance of our schools. So the teacher sounds bright enough to me...unlike the people on this board who parrot every single Republican talking point even when said talking points are just as anti-white and nonsensical as many of the Democratic ones...Le sigh.

"Also there are too many women in these non-jobs as well. They should be raising children."

You can make an argument for Human Resources being a non-job, but seriously, most of those union members are teachers. Teaching is far from being a "non-job"....After all, somebody has to do it! Sure, they can do it more efficiently with fewer smartboards and laptops for every student, but that is beside the point here. What do you propose, are we all going to return to homeschooling kids up to the 8th grade? I don't really follow your line of logic here.

"Education majors were the dumbest majors in college. Teachers aren't very smart. It's a cushy job where the only "grad school" you have to do is a fake M.Ed. that any two-bit college has a program for."

Elementary Ed teachers under age 40 are usually dumb. But there are plenty of older teachers and secondary school teachers who are pretty bright. I'm not saying they are geniuses, but they are as bright as RNs and nurses get paid more typically (or at least in the South they do. Average high school teacher's salary is only around 40,000 in my state- and that's in the wealthier areas...I mean come on, "undocumented" construction workers can often rake in more than that over a year) Anyway, the average intelligence of education majors would go up if it were a more lucrative or at least a reasonably lucrative field. Universities could also consider making requirements for secondary ed majors more difficult.

Kylie wrote:"Solution to which problem? Several have been mentioned here.

Please don't tell me you mean the problem of closing that pesky and persistent achievement gap."

Pick one! The core problem mentioned here, as always, is that pesky achievement gap. Solutions are never stated, just a lot of whining about namz. Seriously...my question was rhetorical, Kylie. I know most isteve readers don't have high IQs, despite some sad attempts to fashion themselves as "quants", "armchair scientists" and other varities of internet intellectuals.

I know just as well as you do that noone who regularly comments on these threads has any solutions, or is actually interested in taking action to change things. It's always easier to sit on your bum and complain to your computer about stuff. It's also fun :)

First, a teacher needs to be reasonably intelligent, but doesn't have to be a genius to motivate kids.

That's true. The most effective high-school teacher I had fell into that category. He wasn't brilliant, by any means, but he had a very solid curriculum and well-organized lesson plans, with plenty of grammar and vocabulary drills, pop quizzes, lots of essay writing, etc.

The problem is that a teacher, if she's lazy or tendentious, can waste her students time with childish busywork or politically correct touchy-feeliness, and there's almost nothing you can do about it. Someone like Jane Elliott can torture her young students with her "experiments" in anti-white racism and brainwashing, and not only wiil she not be fired, she'll be lauded to the skies for her "innovative" work and rewarded with lucrative lecture tours and corporate seminars.

Just an all-around silly push by the GOP in general, with really no potential upside. I don't see how going after teachers, police, and fireman helps the Republicans. Yes, a lot of government employees outside of those 3 professions are professional bureaucrats and very pro big government. However teachers as a whole I would say are pretty evenly split between the Democrats and Republicans and even most of the ones who are Democrats would be considered on the right of the Democratic Party. Cops and firefighters are almost the quintessential working class GOP supporters, it's rare to meet a cop or firefighter/EMT who is a liberal Democrat.

Additionally, as Steve has pointed out on numerous occasions these public employee unions as well civil service examinations are the main reason the diversicrats and their robe-wearing allies haven't turned government employment into an affirmative action gravy train. Ironic because civil service exams and unions were promoted by turn of the 20th century progressives in order bust the 19th century urban political machines. Now the modern day left keeps getting it's social engineering thwarted by those very same institutions. Unfortunately one of the consequences of a successful GOP attack on public sector unions might me more affirmative action and with it more inefficient log-rolling built into the structure of government employment which would be much harder to undue once it's been established.

On another note, the arguments being floated against states with unions against states without seems pretty weak even without these other considerations. I saw one article saying that pro-union states had payed around 10% more for the same work as non-union states, it's Armageddon! Really that's it? 10% savings? That's not going to really help balance the state budget in most cases, and like I mentioned before it's secondary effect could be a lot more expensive than 10% if DOJ and the federal courts could then ram affirmative action down the throats of many government professions. The GOP is oblivious to the big picture here.

The core problem mentioned here, as always, is that pesky achievement gap. Solutions are never stated, just a lot of whining about namz.

I think if you search this site you'll see a lot of proposed solutions. And I'll give you mine:

The entire system is set up on the premise that all children are equally educable. The solution is to abolish the system that's based on the false premise.

Education is a commodity like cars, wheat, software, etc. Producers will supply individual family's education preferences like they do everything else. Pay cash for education, a fundamental problem is the third-party payor dynamic. Don't have cash use a credit card. No credit, don't have kids. Whatever.

There is no need for the left of the bell curve to read Shakespeare or attempt algebra. It is criminally abusive to sit young people in classrooms and have a bunch of idiot idealists try to pound them all into round holes.

Tell everybody they've got to make their own way, and we get rid of the Yale-or-jail track for NAMs and the phony jobs like Community Outreach Director that we can no longer afford to pay.

Chief Seattle:That's why No Child Left Behind was such great fun - maybe the best thing GW did in office. It forced public schools to meet minimum standards on penalty of losing funding. Things like that tend to focus the mind. Unfortunately they soon figured out how to water down the tests, but in the meantime had a teachable moment as they say.

American Goy: Granted, I will be able to move to Europe, or even to Latin America to weather the upcoming financial apocalypse...

But what will you do, the bitter, cynical, selfish white men on this site?

Well, since the U.S. will then finish its transformation into Mexico North, I'll just stay here and make the transition from middle-class white American to higher-caste white Norte Mexicano. My children can get high-paying b.s. gummint patronage jobs that enable them to live most of their lives in still-First World countries, referring to their very white selves as "people of color", and arrogantly and sanctimoniously hectoring and bullying their demoralized hosts into taking in or otherwise supporting millions of our NAMs.

The only problem I see with my plan is that all the "easy mark" First World countries will be too close to being wrecked themselves, and the tougher nuts will have wised up. If not, by the time this game is over we'll have half the population of Mexico transferred to Kazakhstan.

I know just as well as you do that noone who regularly comments on these threads has any solutions, or is actually interested in taking action to change things.

The solution has been to move beyond the "Yale or Jail" format now in use. IOW, we don't need to see to it that every kid passes Algebra II to graduate high school so he can go to college. We'd recognize that some kids will not get into higher math, but that doesn't mean they can't be productive at some blue-collar trade, so we'd use IQ and other methods to track these kids, as is done in countries like Germany.

Unfortunately, this is not feasible for two reasons. First, such a program would lead to racially disparate results. Blacks would attend college at lower rate than whites. Neither the GOP nor the Democrats want to face that reality.

The second reason this program wouldn't work is because we keep importing millions of unskilled workers who drive down the wages of those on the left side of the Bell Curve.

All of this stuff has been discussed by Steve time and again. It's quite easy to research. Just use a search engine.

What you seem to miss is that teachers ARE bad and the unions ARE a racket. It's not a binary proposition - group differences in IQ play a part (probably the larger part, given the 1stdv difference between blacks and whites), but the education and hiring of teachers in this country is also a joke. We won't be able to eliminate the gap, but, hey, how about hiring teachers who know what they're doing?

Republicans have been bashing (with good cause!) the teachers' unions for decades, and it was always justified. That liberals are now coming around to this cause (in order to avoid thinking prohibited thoughts about race) is a great chance to finally do something about these clowns.

I saw the movie yesterday and it seems to me in the movie that all children were lumped into one group. As a metter of fact the DC kids were represented by a white blond haired kid icon. The public mantra is that all people are created equal and all groups are created equal therefore equal outcome is a given. I believe that even most public school teachers know that equality among groups does not exist but to say so out load would mead loss of their jobs. By the way wasn't the education czar from Chicago supposed to fix all that.

Marlo: Pick one! The core problem mentioned here, as always, is that pesky achievement gap. Solutions are never stated, just a lot of whining about namz.

Um, you do grasp that the majority of the commenters here are HBDers, right? So why are you expecting people who've concluded there's no solution to "that pesky achievement gap" (short of genetic engineering or eugenic breeding) to come up with solutions? And people don't whine about namz so much as they whine about non-namz who wreck society pursuing political or social or educational "solutions" to a problem that isn't, by their lights, caused by political or social or educational factors.

I know just as well as you do that noone who regularly comments on these threads has any solutions, or is actually interested in taking action to change things.

What's the difference between whining about a problem without offering a solution, and whining about whining about a problem without offering a solution, without offering a solution?

"The core problem mentioned here, as always, is that pesky achievement gap."

That pesky achievement gap is laregly due to a pesky intelligence gap. Something tells me you wouldn't mind trying out the ballpeen hammer solution to that problem.

"I know just as well as you do that noone who regularly comments on these threads has any solutions, or is actually interested in taking action to change things."

Right. I have no interest in using valuable resources to solve insoluble problems. On the other hand, I'm very interested in taking action to change things. That's why I'm here. It's not my idea of "fun".

The NEA has been backing Democratic, left-wing, open borders, multiculti policies for decades. So, yes, they are directly to blame for the failure we see in America's classrooms, even if that blame is related to something other than their teaching, it's still a direct result of their own actions.

"Just proves that in the end we're all in this together - you can't throw all the machinists out of work and make all the drywall guys compete against $8/hr illegals and then think that an average public school teacher is going to keep getting $80K/yr with a fat pension."

I've argued for years that government workers pay and benefits, on average, are not too high it's just that it's been indexed for inflation all while the pay in the private sector have been eviscerated. The problem comes when you have to tax the larger privately employed population with debased wages/salaries to provide for a people that appear to be living off the fat of the land.

"Pick one! The core problem mentioned here, as always, is that pesky achievement gap. Solutions are never stated, just a lot of whining about namz. Seriously...my question was rhetorical, Kylie. I know most isteve readers don't have high IQs, despite some sad attempts to fashion themselves as "quants", "armchair scientists" and other varities of internet intellectuals."

What the hell are you talking about? We don't offer up solutions to the achievement gap because the problem is intractable. The intelligence gap between the races is due to genetics.

"... The core problem mentioned here, as always, is that pesky achievement gap. Solutions are never stated..."

Wisconsin is 84% white. About 20% of the students enrolled in Wisconsin public schools are non-Asian minorities.[1] 61% of Wisconsin eighth-graders are below proficient in math.[2] Also, 66% of Wisconsin eighth-graders are below proficient in reading.[3] Now, assume that all of Wisconsin's eighth-grade classes are 20% NAM, each of who are illiterate, innumerate, and ineducable; that means that 41% and 46% of non-Hispanic white Wisconsin students are below proficient in mathematics and reading, respectively. Now, I'm not saying that state governments don't waste money trying to close the racial achievement gap; however, I don't think that "NAMs" and "HBD-denialism" are the problems here.

The solution is school vouchers. Home schooling moms should be allowed to pay the vouchers to themselves. Granted the racial gap is probably intractable, but the schools don't have to be as bad as they are.

So any woman who is a home schooling mom is, ipso facto, a genius capable of teaching any subject, but if she decides to go to college, earn a teaching degree and get a job as a teacher, she becomes an idiot. Check.

"So any woman who is a home schooling mom is, ipso facto, a genius capable of teaching any subject."

Home schooling works, and studies show that the educational level of the mother has very little to do with how well it works. Even mothers who didn't complete high school have children who far exceed the norms for kids educated in the public schools. Admittedly there is some self-selection going on. People don't take on tasks for which they know themselves to be incompetent. But the main reason why home schooling works is that tutoring is about twenty times more effective than group instruction. A half hour of actual reading is worth more than ten hours of sitting in a reading class and daydreaming the time away. Overall, home-schooled children score at the 85th percentile on standardized tests, and the children of poor families--even when the parents are not well educated themselves--score only a little lower than that figure. I am in favor of home schooling for other reasons as well, but for poor children of average intelligence who find themselves stuck in dysfunctional schools it may be the only possible escape from poverty.

So any woman who is a home schooling mom is, ipso facto, a genius capable of teaching any subject, but if she decides to go to college, earn a teaching degree and get a job as a teacher, she becomes an idiot.

More like ed schools and teacher colleges do their best to weed out anyone who doesn't toe the PC multiculti line. Sure, some "heretics" slip through the cracks, but by and large these programs succeed in getting enough true believers (or at least fearful conformists) into the public school system.

Thing is, even a housebound mother with only a high-school diploma can do a decent job of teaching her kids if she adheres to a solid curriculum (such as Art Robinson's). And when you get to some of the hairier stuff (like trig or calc), you can always hire tutors at reasonable rates. The results of doing that are usually much better than what you get from most public schools.

Re: Anonymous No, I am not kidding you, and I was discussing teachers, not necessarily their union, most cops don't necessarily follow their union's official political agenda, why would teachers be any different. Most of the PC crap in public schools comes from the administration responding to political pressure usually the state or federal government, not from the teachers themselves. Trust me plenty of teachers forget all the ed school crap there told in college about 1-2 years after teaching in a real school, for the simple reason that most ed school profs have never taught anywhere but the university and therefore don't know anything about teaching. I've known a fair number of teachers, and some of them are already skeptical of what they have learned in college after only one semester observing their senior year of college. They are more Republicans and conservative Democrats in public schools than you think, they are certainly much more on the political center than university profs are in my personal experience. Nevertheless the GOP seems determined to crush public employee unions and loss votes and give the diversicrats more power over hiring in government at all levels for what seems to me to be minor cost savings, that was my main point.

Trust me plenty of teachers forget all the ed school crap there told in college about 1-2 years after teaching in a real school

Uh, I went to a public high-school. There was LOTS of PC multiculti touchy-feely shit being shoveled down our throats by our teachers--and from what I could tell they were more than happy to shovel that shit.

"Education majors were the dumbest majors in college. Teachers aren't very smart. It's a cushy job where the only "grad school" you have to do is a fake M.Ed. that any two-bit college has a program for."

I have an M.Ed. and can tell you this is absolutely true.

My undergrad degree was not in education and was far harder than the M.Ed.

I only bothered to get the M.Ed. because it only required two more pathetic classes than required to be recommended for certification. Ed. school is a scam.

The gap exists as an observable phenomenon. Period. In practical terms it doesn't matter why. A number of peripheral adjustments have been made with no real effect. It's up to black learners to close it themselves. Even if they fail to do so, a lot of outcmes would be a lot better if they seriously tried. Looking for some magic speed up pill certainly hasn't worked so far and there's no reason to assume it will.

As a matter of fact, what you're really saying is that it doesn't matter that a gap exists (not just that it doesn't matter why).

Not saying there's a problem with that. It's certainly how I feel. But it doesn't match your usual reticence about -- hell, shock and amazement at -- the fact there exist white people who'll come right out and say they like white people better than black people (some of them even have the audacity to admit they like white people a LOT more than they like black people!). Progress? Or does it all still pale next to the moral glow of casting blacks in plays never written for them?

EDITED Who are America's fastest-growing class of millionaires? They are police officers, firefighters, teachers and federal bureaucrats, who, unless things change drastically, will be paid something near their full salaries every year--until death--after retiring in their mid-50s....a retirement sum worth millions. Based on a realistic 4% return, an $80,000 annual pension payout with full health benefits implies a large pot of money--$2 million, to be precise.

That $2 million also happens to be the implied booty of your average California policeman who retires at age 55........in Carlsbad, Cali, the average firefighter or police officer typically retires at age 55 and has 28 years of service w/ an annual city pension of $76,440 (but that's only one pension that we know of---could be several pensions per retiree).

In my experience, the right wing teachers wouldn't mind it if the union went and took a long walk off a short pier. Attacking the union isn't the same thing as attacking the teachers, because the teacher's unions are beyond redemption.

Home schooling works because mothers are schooling their own children, with all the autonomy of discipline and rigor that that entails. If they get involved in group home schooling, they are still working with a selective, selected set who share the same mentality. They continue tutoring in small groups, with a few other well behaved children.

Traditional school teachers know that tutoring works best, too, which is why many of them come early or stay after school to offer tutoring in their subject area, a couple of days a week. Typically, few of their students take advantage of the offer. Public school teachers also do not have the luxury of selecting their students. They must teach whoever slopes in, including the low functioning, the feckless and the outright criminal. The mothers of those children have no intention of home schooling, and are not opposed to a law suit, if they decide that precious has been unfairly treated.

I couldn't agree more about the effectiveness of tutoring. The highest utility of the public education dollar would be to eliminate every educational position, and put the money toward one qualified tutor for every three schoolchildren. The results, both short and long term, would be extremely gratifying.

BUT, if there is to be any hope of reversing the US economy's slide into that of a low-wage, third-world hellholes, it is imperative to preserve our existing core of secure, middle-class jobs, which are, unfortunately, presently concentrated in the public sector. In other words, angry Rush listeners, I know you've been hurt badly over the past 30 years, but in taking down the teachers, janitors, bureaucrats, and garbagemen, you're just clearing the way for even more downward pressure on your own wages and benefits.

if there is to be any hope of reversing the US economy's slide into that of a low-wage, third-world hellholes, it is imperative to preserve our existing core of secure, middle-class jobs, which are, unfortunately, presently concentrated in the public sector.

Huh? This sector is not the productive sector. It gets paid out of our ever-shrinking tax base. The situation simply isn't sustainable for much longer. If we really want to save the middle class, we need to stop outsourcing, illegal immigration, H1B visas, affirmative action, and the dumbing-down of our educational system. Good luck.

"there is to be any hope of reversing the US economy's slide into that of a low-wage, third-world hellholes, it is imperative to preserve our existing core of secure, middle-class jobs, which are, unfortunately, presently concentrated in the public sector."

Anon,

Basic econ lesson: public service jobs are created in the first place because the mass of society is busy producing and dispensing, at least in a healthy system, that is.

It came about that villagers saw that as their pop. grew, it would be more efficient to have some people "serve" the needs of the public since the public no longer could efficiently work at both their own jobs and do double duty as the town's firemen, security providers, teachers, etc.

A service sector exists to support the "producer" sector. If there are no jobs for the producers, (ie, there is no production of goods and service) or if there are too few jobs for them (like now--unemployment high, you know?) there can be no jobs for those who "serve" them.

*Re-establish tracking in schools, provided it's based on testing validated by outsiders or actual achievement in school.

*Restore some vocational education in high schools.

*Don't allow "disparate impact" lawsuits.

*Allow corporations to use externally-validated IQ tests in hiring. (This will slow down the collegiate rat-race.)

*Abolish "affirmative action" for anyone not the descendant of slaves or Native Americans, and limit the amount of boost that can be given for those groups.

*Restructure immigration to prefer smart and/or high-earning immigrants, regardless of country of origin, but block dumb and/or those incapable or unwilling to earn a better-than-average income. (This especially means not allowing family-reunification immigration.)

None of these things will actually "close the achievement gap", but they will make life better for those who are on the left side of the bell curve. You could also look up Steve's essay on how to help those on the left side of the bell curve.

A thousand times no. Why do conservatives keep promoting this shit? Newsflash: high school kids are immature and stupid. They will slack off in class or skip it entirely. They certainly will not remember the skills they learned in these classes. Vocational schools work well with adults and teens who are ready to work full time and move out on their own. Most high school kids who are tracked into these vocational streams will not be ready.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.